iPhone News Updated

Verizon iPhone breaks sales records, estimated at 1M within week

When Verizon launched the iPhone 4 last week, we all knew it was going to be big. But Verizon broke first-day sales records in only two hours of release on February 3rd, between 3 and 5 a.m. despite the phone being the same model released by AT&T over eight months ago.

Although Verizon and Apple have yet to release official numbers of phones sold, analyst Mike Abramsky of RBC Capital Markets estimates the pre-order sales to be around 100,000 sold.

At that rate, Abramsky believes that Verizon, Apple, and Best Buy will sell over 1 million phones within the first week, which accounts for the entire stock put forth by Apple.

The fact that the iPhone completely sold out between 3 and 5 a.m. “Affirms the strong pent-up demand for the Verizon iPhone, and bodes well for initial sell-through,” said Ambramsky.

Ambramsky believes the iPhone 4 for Verizon will sell 3 to 4 million in the first quarter.

Some analysts argue that Verizon’s iPhone won’t sell as many as its AT&T counterpart mostly because the iPhone 4 is not a new phone, Verizon does not offer the same aggressive early upgrades as AT&T, and many Verizon customers are stuck in two-year Android agreements. Also, Verizon’s most basic data plan costs around $30 a month while AT&T’s is $15.

That said, at least Verizon’s voice network actually works, which may prompt some iPhone users to switch to Verizon now that the iPhone is available on the network.

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Happy 4th Anniversary, iPhone [INFOGRAPHIC]

Four years ago today, Apple released the original iPhone. The hype that preceded the release of the so-called “Jesus Phone” was nothing short of staggering.

Analysts, tech blogs and consumers oscillated between hyping the phone as the second-coming or deriding it as much-ado about nothing. In 2007, I was both an Apple fan (I purchased my first iPod in 2002) and a mobile phone fanatic. Still, I had my doubts about the iPhone because of its outlandish price, its carrier lock (and the carrier of choice) and the lack of third-party applications. I thought, OK, the iPhone will probably sell pretty well, but it’s not going to change the mobile phone industry.

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